Xi3′s Piston Modular Computer Will Come With Windows On It

Xi3 Corporation’s $1,000 “Piston” device, meant to be a PC and game console hybrid, is the size of a grapefruit, and despite its miniature form-factor, will be easy to upgrade, says Xi3’s Chief Marketing Officer, David Politis. In the video interview above with Geek Exchange, Politis demonstrates how one of Xi3’s other modular computers is split into three boards that can be pulled apart.

Because the Piston uses an X86 processor, any X86 application or OS will be able to run on it. As far as the operating system goes, the Piston, Politis says, will “ship standard with Windows,” but if you want to run Linux or even Android on the device, you’ll be able to do that.

As far as the Piston’s user interface goes, you can either use the Windows interface or Xi3’s custom interface, which was demonstrated this past weekend at the SXSW expo, including how you can boot a game up from Steam. Polygon managed to grab camera footage of the demonstration and you can watch it below:

The Piston will be released in time for the 2013 holiday season. Prices for the device start at $1,000. You can read more about pricing details here.

As for the Piston itself, I’m sorry guys but it’s just not for me. I’m happy with my self-built i7 awesomeness that I built less than a year ago for less than $600 thank you =^_^=

Leo121

One thous… ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS!!!

http://www.facebook.com/people/Altin-Bujupaj/1157167838 Altin Bujupaj

Where is Dr. Evil when you need him ?!

Go2hell66

is it just me or did the thing look like it was about to die while running tomb raider?

http://www.siliconera.com/ Ishaan

That was a video, not the actual game running. It was just a demonstration of what they want the end experience to look like in terms of UI.

http://watercrown.info/ Ryusui

Windows 7, I hope.

Mir Teiwaz

I feel like $1000 is gonna be a hard sell as competition to a console. Even when it launched, the PS3 was still $400 cheaper than that. For a grand I could build a PC that would use regular, off-the-shelf parts instead of whatever this Piston thing is going to use. It claims to be easy to upgrade…but how much is an upgrade going to cost? How much of an upgrade will it be?

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